“Why will I have to leave Rome, where I spent some days of magic?”: History, memory and aesthetics in four writers from Mexico in Italy in the early 1920s

Abstract

This article will offer a panoramic view of the readings of the first generation of Mexican writers who travelled and wrote in Italy between the 1920s and 1940s. Some of these writers were active since the foundation of the Ateneo de México, better known as the Ateneo de la Juventud Mexicana –without being part of it–. It is also worth to deepen on one fundamental piece in its constitution: Alfonso Reyes. In second place, we will go on with the texts of Luis G. Urbina and Rafael Cabrera in their dialogue with Julio Torri, to finish with a review of the less known experience of Rubén M. Campos in Italy. These texts will be analysed following the testimonies of their generation companions, creating a dialogue between them, which –however– it constantly emerged naturally thanks to the intellectual networks they had and the figure of Torri himself as an axis and a witness from Mexico of this cultural exchange.